Linguistic Areas of the Americas

Abstract

Abstract The Goal Of This Chapter Is To survey the linguistic areas of the Americas, to the extent that they have been identified. Areal linguistics is very important to the study of Native American languages, for the primary goal of historical linguistic investigations should be to find out what really happened-to determine the real history, be it genetic or contact, that explains traits shared by different languages (Bright 1976). Areal linguistics is concerned with the diffusion of structural features across language boundaries: “The term ‘linguistic area’ generally refers to a geographical area in which, due to borrowing, languages of different genetic origins have come to share certain borrowed features-not only vocabulary but also elements of phonological, grammatical, or syntactic structure” (Bright and Sherzer 1978:228). Linguistic areas are also referred to at times by the terms “convergence area,” “diffusion area”, “Sprachbund”, and “adstratum.”